But a rule to hold 25% of your wealth in (physical) cash doesn’t seem well balanced. Imagine stashing $250,000 in notes somewhere. Do you put it in a safe in your house?

I commented already for the parent, but the article most definitely does not mean physical cash. Nobody will advice you to hold physical cash.

Unless you want to live like Scrooge McDuck or Smaug.

You swap systemic risk for physical security risk if you hold substantial hard currency.

The "cash" in the article does not mean physical cash. It means money in a bank account.

Edit: or more accurately,

> The cash portion should be kept in a money market fund investing only in short-term U.S. Treasury securities

That's kind of the opposite of cash...

Cash is frequently used as shorthand for liquid.

Liquid and low risk. Equities are usually liquid but they're not really cash equivalents at least at the individual consumer level.

So you don't consider it cash unless it's US Treasury notes stuffed in a mattress?

Uhm, mattress is optional, but the form of notes (or equivalent) is not.

Words have meaning. Cash you have physically and it shelters you from incompetent/rogue financial companies and governments. If you use "cash" to mean something else then what is the word for cash?

Like everyone else, a liquid and very low risk (modulo inflation) financial instrument. (The definition is often a bit broader in financial statements.) I'd posit that, in this day and age, $100K (or whatever) in bank notes is going to do you very little good if you lose access to all your accounts.

> Like everyone else, a liquid and very low risk (modulo inflation) financial instrument.

You clearly misread my question. I'll rephrase for legibility then: What is the word for cash (as in "physical money not in a bank") if you use "cash" to mean "money in a bank"? Is it now a concept so rarely used that term is unnecessary?

Also wow, didn't know you can't buy a car or a house with cash in US anymore, interesting times. Which year did it become illegal?

Words can have more than one meaning, depending on context. For investors talking about asset allocation, "cash" means t-bills, money market, or money in the bank.

It depends on the context. In the context of paying for your dinner, it means bills/notes. In the context of personal or corporate finances, it means liquid, low-risk investments.

>Also wow, didn't know you can't buy a car or a house with cash in US anymore, interesting times. Which year did it become illegal?

It's not illegal but I'd guess in a lot of situations involving (legal) high dollar transactions, the seller is probably going to tell you to take your briefcase of $100 bills to the bank and get a cashier's check--which will also kick off some raised eyebrows and financial reporting obligations.

Bank accounts being frozen has absolutely nothing to do with holding cash. Also, anyone saying "holding cash" almost certainly does not mean in a safe/under your mattress. It means in a bank account somewhere. Hopefully a high yield savings account.

And, the strategy to dealing with bank accounts being frozen is multiple bank accounts at different, unrelated banks. Same with credit cards.

Well it does, because if you trust a bank to not freeze your accounts, then you dont need to hold so much cash.

As to having multiple bank accounts, have you heard of data sharing?

If you have multiple bank accounts in your name, across multiple banks, they can all be frozen, just look at how sanctions work of foreign entities.

You obviously dont know how credit reference agencies work. So in the UK, the electoral register (open and closed) is used by credit reference agencies to see if you are linked to an address. The credit reference agencies then pass on information to would be lenders and banks, and banks also update the credit reference agencies with your monthly bank account totals and your direct debit payments so they can see your monthly outgoings and see if you are paying your overheads reguarly, so other banks and lenders can see if you are worth lending money to.

Now even if you dont need to borrow money, pay your bills as soo as they come through the letter box if they are not handled by direct debit, that information is still passed on by your bank to multiple credit reference agencies who then disseminate the data around the world to different countries because programming teams can exist in multiple countries, different laws and then you get stuffed if you value your privacy, and thats before hackers get involved hacking the likes of Experian.

Again, cash in the context of the article has nothing to do with physical possession of money in a safe or something.

And, you seem to imply I don't have an understanding for how banking works. If one of your bank accounts gets yanked for fraud investigation, you shouldn't be getting all accounts frozen at all banks, outside of some government intervention involving freezing assets. If that's a situation you have to worry about, then sure maybe having physical cash matters. It doesn't for 99.999+% of people.

In the vast majority of cases, if you have an account frozen at one bank establishment, until they finish action... the rest of your money is fine at other banks. You should have plenty of time to go through the appeals process and whatnot.

>just look at the sanctions done to Russians when the West decides to stoke a war!

Worth noting that the sanctions on Russia were due to Russia invasions of neighbors like Ukraine (and Georgia), not "the West" deciding to stoke a war. "The West" was using sanctions to _avoid_ stoking a war in responding to Russia's various military offensives against neighbors.

If you're actually interested in having an informed opinion on the matter, it might be useful finding out more about history of NATO vs USSR, expansion of NATO and dynamic of relationship between NATO and Russia, and EU and Russia in the last ~20 years. Not defending anyone, nor do I have any horse in the game, but as usual, reality is not black and white, and there's a broader history of moves and counter-moves that lead to this point. So "the West stoke a war" is not simply and obviously false (neither it is one-dimensionally true).

In fact I'm actually very familiar with that history already. Russia has justified their military invasions and occupations of neighbors by claiming that their actions were a result of NATO's actions, but this is in my opinion after having considered the evidence to be a ridiculous pretext. At no point did NATO actually force Russia to roll their military forces across the borders of their neighbors despite Russia's obviously false claims to that effect.

This is a case where pro-Russian propagandists have made a lot of headway in both-sides-ing an issue which was unilateral. Repeating that propaganda isn't a nuanced or informed take, it's rationalizing and justifying war crimes.

I sometimes think the Bolshevik revolution, the death of Tsar Nicholas 2, related to the British Royal Family, Queen Victoria was first cousin to Tsar Nicholas 2, are not over.

Disputes run deep and span generations when at the top.

The west did not stoke a war with Russia. What are you on about?

You might disagree, but this a widely held narrative. If you aren’t familiar with it you’re not getting news from diverse sources

I had a bank account emptied by the US govt.

The California state board of equalization (SBOE) decided that since I hadn't filed and paid taxes in Cali for a few years, that they'd just empty one of my bank accounts to collect on me. Why didn't I pay taxes? Well, I moved to Vietnam and didn't know that I still had to file a $0.

Zero warning or notice. They just emptied it. Bank even charged me a couple hundred for this 'service' on top of it.

Even after I cleared up the issue with them via my EA, I've never gotten the money back. Luckily, they hit one of my bank accounts that had a small amount of money in it, enough to not get dinged fees by the bank for them holding my money. I was only using that account to transfer money back and forth to Vietnam.

So yea... I'm with you.